LensWork Technology Blog

Technology Blind Spots

My glee over my new Android phone is a great example of today's topic — technological blind spots.

Some background. In my twenties, I was the electronics buyer for the 9th largest retailer in the country. It was my job to be the ultimate gearhead in the corporation, to know every product trend, to analyze product features and marketing potential, predict consumer likes and dislikes, invest/gamble millions of dollars in inventory, and to train our multi-state, multi-store sales staff on the ins and outs of every piece of new electronic gear we offered to the public. I was the go-to guy when it came to technology and I loved it. I knew every corner of the consumer electronics industry and there wasn't a product I couldn't explain and demonstrate with aplomb.

So, even to this day, it bruises my ego to admit when there is a subset of technology of which I have been simply unaware. Worse, that gazillions of consumers have already embraced with enthusiasm something of which I am totally ignorant — smart phones being the example du jour. This illustrates one of the great anomalies of our time. Here we are in the age of incredible technological-based communication, yet it's common for any individual to have a complete gap in their consciousness about a branch of technology that has escaped them. We simply cannot keep up with it all.

My brother and my best friend are both blind to the world of MP3 players. They've no idea what they are or why they would need them. My wife is yet to spend a single moment looking at my iPad. I've given both of my daughters digital recorders to capture the voices of their growing children and they have not used them. Another friend does not have nor see the value in a cell phone. They are not Luddites who shun the advances of technology. My brother knows all about the latest power tools; my best friend loves his iPad 2; my wife is also my publishing partner and knows her way around all kinds of computer software; my daughters are Skype-savvy, texting-savvy, Bluetooth fans; my cell-less friend is an accomplished digital photographer. They are not technophobes, but merely selectively engaged. Me, too.

We have each in our own ways both embraced and ignored technology in amazing fits of fandom and complete ignorance. I find this fascinating. When I was in China a couple of years ago, one of my fellow travellers spent his time absorbed in his new iPhone, repeatedly thrilled to discover some new app and showing me what it could do. "Brooks, look at this neat digital compass," he'd quip with enthusiasm. I'd point to the passing scenes outside our tour bus and reply, "Look outside, man" I said, "There's China!" I chose to ignore; he chose to embrace.

Having just discovered smart phones for myself, I am more understanding of his enthusiasm. A couple of years ago for me, it was the world of GPS direction finders. Before that, netbooks. Before that, portable MP3 players. I still have no idea what a Wii is nor why I would want one. Blue-ray, HDTV, Social Media — this list of my blind spots goes on and on. On the other hand, I can tell you a great deal about minidiscs and temperature-compensating darkroom timers.

Life, Upside Down

Never take your access to email for granted. This advice comes from one deeply immersed and just pulling above the surface in a month-long conversion from POP3 email accounts to an Exchange Server. Wow. Who knew? For those of you who might look to me for some sort of explanation about the above sentence, I am sorry to disappoint you. I barely understand the principle, let alone the implementation.

Which brings me to the issue at hand. We are gearing up big time for the Road Show. Part of that is an issue of remote access so I can continue to produce our publications while on the road. That required a new server. That implied an update to a new server operation system. That resulted in Exchange. And all of that resulted in me saying goodbye to my role at the IT guy here at LensWork Publishing. For 18 years now, I've known everything. I installed our systems, I configured our systems, I fixed our systems, and I knew our systems. I had knowledge and power. With the new server and Exchange, I have a phone number to call when something doesn't work. I am adrift in a vast ocean without a compass. No wait, I do have a compass — on my new Android phone. I have no email on it, but I do have a compass.

The supposedly "seamless conversion" has been full of seams. Bounced emails, new passwords, shaky implementations, broken routines. For three weeks now we (okay, they) have been tweaking and fixing, adapting and fussing. We see the tunnel and perhaps the light at the end of it. I hope. Some things are now working perfectly, even better than before. Some things are lost in the woods and we miss them terribly.

I was prepared for some rough spots. I was prepared to be patient. I was not prepared for the helplessness of not being able to jump in myself and fix something when it doesn't work. My staff, who have always looked to me for solutions, now look at me with pleading eyes while I stare back blankly. I am not used to this. I will need to learn a very valuable new thing. I will need to learn to let go. I will need to learn new routines and new procedures. I will need to appreciate the opportunity to enjoy the quiet drone of crickets when something doesn't work. Most importantly, I will need to memorize our new IT guy's emergency cell phone number. Life moves on.

UPDATE:
OMG!!! OMG!!!! While I was typing this, I just got email on my new phone!!! The new IT guy gets a cookie. Things are looking up.

A Photography Project … of the Future?

Here's an interesting email I received from a reader. I asked his permission to post it in the blog and he agreed. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I know I'm a bit uncomfortable with it for several reasons. Then again, there is some precedence in art history for this type of thought process. What are your opinions?

   

Hi Brooks,

This is Christian Stepien. I wrote to you a while back to show you the short film I made entitled, The Escarpment. I'm working on a new project, and I thought it might be something you would be interested in.

 

Here's the long and short of it. I was on my iPad, using Google Maps and Street View to see if I could find any of Ansel Adam's "tripod holes" in Yosemite Valley (a place I have never been to, but would love to experience one day). Upon doing so, I saw some great scenes that I wished I could have photographed in person. Then I realized that my iPad could make screen shots. So I composed an image, made a screen shot, opened that image in Photoshop Express, and did some tweaking. So from the comfort of my sofa, and within 5 minutes, I had been transported to Yosemite Valley, made a nice (though, low quality) landscape image, post-processed the image, and had a final product. I created a blog for the image (and for the ones that have/will follow), and gave it the thought provoking title … ready?

 

Sofatography. ( http://sofatography.blogspot.com )

 

But upon reflection, I realized that this idea sparked some debate and concern. Imagine a large company like Google strapped a bunch of top of the line Nikons to the top of a car to image all the roads of North America (or the world). One would never have to leave their living room to create beautiful landscape images. But would it still be considered photography? And could it be considered my photography if it wasn't I who made the initial exposure. To me however, this idea seems to be closely related to the tradition of "sampling" in Hip Hop music. In Eminem's hit song, "Stan", he sampled a part of the singer Dido's song, "Thank You". It was her voice. Her lyrics. Her music. But Eminem's song. With "Sofatography", it was Google that captured the initial, "raw data." It was their lenses. However, I still had to compose the images from their 360-degree panoramas, and do all the post processing to get it just right. 

 

When I had finished that first image, I felt strange. The process was fun, quick, and easy, but somehow felt sacrilegious. Wait, isn't that how we felt moving from film to digital?

 

Anyway, I know you're always interested in things that look at photography in new ways for your podcasts. I thought this might be right up your alley.

 

Have a great day,

Christian

 

I know I'd never do the type of image-making he describes; it's just not my cup of tea. But, would I shun it because of how it was made? Would I think less of the photographer knowing how they derived their initial images? Instead of Google, what if the starting point was public-domain so-called "clip art" stock photographs? This is a cousin to the question about photographing someone's sculpture or painting and then using it to make our own work.

 

Interesting question. Any thoughts?

Functional Perfection

This idea interests me because it's the pragmatic solution to the problem of crippling perfectionism. As many a self-help books describes, the most common outcome of perfectionism is procrastination. So, how do we as artists balance our pursuit of perfection with our drive to produce? The answer is, quite simply, functional perfectionism. I can thank technology for teaching me this valuable lesson.

Not the first — but perhaps the best — example of this is in my observation occurred in the world of computer printers. My first printer was a daisy wheel device. It did a fine job of printing nice clear type, assuming one did not need the extravagance of italics, bold, or various type sizes. Innovative manufacturers realized that lots of people did indeed want greater flexibility, and so we saw the advancement of technology in the introduction of 9-pin dot matrix printers. They were crude and the type was ugly, but they did produce fonts with flexibility. Responding to "ugly," it wasn't long until the introduction of the24-pin dot matrix printer, a more sophisticated device but one whose type was still constructed of tiny visible dots. Pushing closer to functional perfection, the industry then introduced the LaserJet printer at a whopping 150 dpi. The were no visible dots, but the edges of the letters were somewhat rough and ragged and easily distinguishable from professionally set type we would see in books and magazines. The technologies continue to improve to 300 dpi and eventually 600 dpi laser jet printers. All of this happened fairly quickly -- within a matter of years.

   

And then, the most amazing thing happened. Once LaserJet printers reached a resolution of 600 dpi, innovation ground to a halt. True, prices plummeted. True, there were some 1200 dpi models introduced, but they were so expensive they never garnered a large audience. The plateau of 600 dpi in this world of computer printers reached functional perfection. Said another way, people could not see any improvement in their type documents with higher resolution. The few printers that were produced with 1200 dpi showed improved performance when it came to images, but these were quickly outpaced by color inkjet printers with which even the highest resolution Laserjets could not compete.

Functional perfection, therefore, is related to us — the human ability to perceive. Why did quadraphonic music never really take hold in the market place? It was beyond the functional perfection of stereo which so perfectly matches the human auditory system. If we had four ears, I'm sure quadraphonic music systems would be de rigueur.

   

In every technology, there is a point of functional perfection. At least for most of us, there is no need for higher resolution than 320 kbps MP3 files. There is no need for music systems that can create tones higher than about 12,000 kHz. Does anyone really need a color inkjet printer that produces dots smaller than three picoliters? For the average camera that will make 8x10s of the family snapshots, will anyone need higher resolution than 8-10 megapixels? Probably not, so the plateau of functional perfection has been reached — at least for these cameras.

   

This idea pertains, however, even to us photographers who want and need better results than our snapshot brethren. Even a 6-foot print on the gallery wall only needs so much resolution beyond which is meaningless data.

Another example of that is that I've discovered, through practical experience, that there is a functional perfection in the 16 GB memory card. On even my most intense and productive photographic days in the field, I rarely fill a 16 GB memory card to full capacity, even when shooting in auto bracket mode. I have one of these cards for each of my cameras, and two spares, just in case. I am, essentially, out of the memory card market.

   

For me, discovering the point of functional perfection — be it in quality or quantity — is a strategy I employ with every new technology. I have found it incredibly useful in all of my creative endeavors to know with sufficient precision when the line is crossed between functional perfection and wasteful fastidiousness. If I could only recover from my youth those lost hours I spent measuring darkroom formulas to the hundredth of a gram!

The Lost Rooms

A friend sent me a fun post about the lost art of the 1970s "man cave."

It brought back memories of my youth when I used to judge a potentially rentable apartment by whether or not it would accommodate my needs for a darkroom and a music room and my library. Who cares about a bedroom, a dining room, or a kitchen? Those were for old people. What I wanted were entertainment rooms.

Ah, those long gone days! Technology, it seems, has completely eliminated the need for rooms. My room full of music gear is now all contained in my Sansa Fuze MP3 player and superb set of headphones.

   

My library has condensed to my Kindle.

The "TV room" is wherever my iPad is.

My darkroom is my computer; my office is my computer; my phone is my computer, my letter-writing desk is my computer; my shopping mall is my computer . . .

My "rooms" have reduced to a really comfortable, multipurpose chair and a good lamp. I think this is actually a good thing. Without technology, by now I'd probably need a 15,000 square foot house just to fit all the stuff.

Pilot error

I write my blog posts using Microsoft OneNote and post from there. Last week I upgraded my Microsoft Office Suite to the new 2010 version. Love the upgrade, the new features, the increased integration. Nice job, Microsoft.

In the instructions, they advised uninstalling Office 2007 before installing Office 2010. I ignored it. The first blog post I wrote in OneNote 2010 and then posted did not include any of the pictures. What gives? Lots of fussing, lots of frustration, lots of cursing Microsoft.

Eventually, I realized that the blog was being handed over from OneNote 2010 to Word 2007 for posting. Oops. Because I hadn't uninstalled Word 2007 per the instructions, the images weren't posting correctly. My fault. I uninstalled Word 2007 and the posts worked perfectly once they routed through Word 2010 like they were supposed to.

Which brings up two points. It's so frustrating when software doesn't work like we think it should; seems to me that I should not have had the problem in the first place. Then again, who is really to blame for my frustration when I chose to ignore their advice and thereby created my own problem? It's the age old war of user versus producer.

When we make photographs intended to be seen under X conditions, who is at fault when the images look crappy under Y conditions? (Think metamerism.) Or, here's another example: We publish our PDFs, for example, for use with Acrobat version 9 and state that they will only work properly using version 9 or greater. Every week we get one or two people who call to complain that our discs are "defective" because they can't open the PDF. Once we walk them through this version business, everything works fine and they are grateful for the help. Nonetheless, it always amuses me that their initial reaction is "Your disc is defective."

Whenever I have software problems, I've been well served to assume it's me that is the problem, not the software. Most of the time this turns out to be true. I simply need to learn something, or do something as instructed, or at least not do something that is specifically advised not to do. (Obviously, I forgot my own strategy with the Office upgrade.) On the rare occasion when it really is the software that is at fault, I at least avoid a lot of the frustration by first assuming it's pilot error.

Years and years in photography have trained me otherwise. As "fine art photographers," we always pushed materials in ways they were never intended to be used. Indeed, being a fine art photographer often meant learning how to get materials to do what the manufacturers said couldn't be done. Think Zone System compressions of 5 stops, for example. Tweaking, ignoring instructions, cobbling together products from Company A and Company Z was commonly a fruitful endeavor. Unfortunately, the rewards for doing so with software are far less rewarding. No matter how much we may think it would improve the situation, you simply cannot use Excel as a replacement for Photoshop, or run your database queries through Illustrator. Not going to work.

I find in my fifties that reading instruction manuals and following directions is the new methodology that leads to the best results. Who knew?

The Creative Mind

There is no technology that will ever replace the creative mind, no technology that can give us a creative idea, no technology that by itself can create anything with meaning.

I'm out photographing this week and ― quite honestly ― it's been a bit of a struggle. I have so much technology with me that it's slightly embarrassing. Yet, I'm not really "in the zone" creatively. All the technology at my disposal is not helping. I'm seeing a few images here and there; I've even made a few compositions that might be something ― but nothing that is making my heart pound a little faster. I've simply not yet connected with any theme, any idea, any purpose that will lead me into images with passion.

I've been here before. Indeed, I'm here often. Because it's not unknown territory, I know what to do. Keep shooting pictures, keep asking questions, keep moving, keep looking. All things change and when the moment arrives where the creative spark ignites, I need to be ready.

There is no better way to do this than to keep the mundane aspects of the process honed. Practice, practice, practice. Grease the technological skids so my skills are ready when the muse calls. Come to think of it, perhaps this is one of the best strategies we could have with technology ― vigilant preparedness.

Email lessons

You live, you learn.

Our email has been down for two days now. There is a lesson worth sharing with all of you, so let me tell you the tale so you may learn from our experience.

When our email went down, I called tech support. A recording explained there was a "latency issue" that was known and they were working on it. I hung up, patient being that I am. This was my first mistake. Turns out, our email problem had nothing to do with their system-wide latency issues. It remained non-functional.

When we still didn't have email this morning, I called again and talked to a support person. As it turns out, our entire email system had been blocked by Network Solutions because we were receiving too many spam emails. What? I was furious. Why?

Spam in our system is diverted to a special "catch-all" email box that we look at and empty about once a week. In the last week, we'd been bombarded. There were 2,700 spam emails in the box and Network Solutions wanted to stop the tide, so they just turned off all inbound email to all mail boxes in our domain — including all our regular inboxes. You've got to be kidding!

So, they turned on our mail boxes, we created a bunch of spam filters for the "catch-all" box so it would automatically delete all those enticing Viagra offers from Russia, and I thought things were fixed. This was my second mistake.

An hour later, we still weren't getting emails. We had a few calls from family and friends wondering why their emails to us were bouncing. I called Network Solutions again. After reviewing a few of the "bounce" messages, I had the presence of mind to ask about the IP address — which looked unfamiliar. Somehow, all our inbound emails were being routed to the wrong IP address!!! Once delivered, there were, of course, no mailboxes with the right names, so they were still being bounced again — this time for a completely different reason.

I do not envy the people who work in tech support. Theirs must be a difficult job. I try to be patient and understanding. It's not their fault; they are the solution. I owe them an apology today for losing my temper and for the loss of derriere they are now experiencing because of my frustration. But, my God, man, just fix the damn thing and let's get on with it.

They are supposed to have it working within 30 minutes. You gotta know I will be testing every single email address in the system before I can relax. In the words of Ronald Reagan, "Trust, but verify."

When technology fails

It's easy to forget how dependent we've become on technology of all sorts. Until it fails. Uh-oh.

Yesterday, for reasons I'm not sure I've heard of yet, Intuit went down. Who's Intuit? They are the Quickbooks people. I'm sure lots of you are Quickbooks or Quicken users. We are, too. Our entire accounting system is based on Quickbooks Enterprise — including our online store credit card processing. From Tuesday night about 7pm until sometime in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday (today) our store (along with gazillions of other merchants) was rejecting every credit card purchase with a cryptic "Error in processing card" notice because Intuit's entire computer system was down. Really down. This probably affected hundreds of thousands of merchants across the country. Amazing. Thankfully, it's back up and running again now. I wonder what the economic impact of that was.

Then, again for some unknown reason, today our email has gone upside down. We use Network Solutions, and they are having some kind of "email transience" problem — whatever that is. We can neither receive nor send email today and it's been that way since we all showed up to work this morning. A few members of the staff have told me this is not such a bad thing, considering this is deadline week for LensWork #89. Not having email for the day did give us a chance to focus on wrapping up the final prepress files. The last-stage proofing is taking place now as I write this, so I'll be uploading the files to our printer later this evening. Maybe. Assuming the wires don't melt between here and Vancouver. And if Canada doesn't sink into the thawing arctic. And if the sun doesn't go nova and make all of us a lot less archival than we were hoping.

Of course, notice how I write this post so blithely as though it will, indeed, upload to the blog site and you will all be able to read it. What faith I must have! On the other hand, sure beats calling each of you on the phone individually. But then, the phone is probably down, too. Think I'll head out with my yippy-skippy digital camera. Damn. Maybe a walk with an audiobook on my MP3 player. Double damn.

Nap time.

Tape

I spent the weekend being Grandpa to our almost 4-year-old grandson. As the true multitasking, technology-happening guy that I am, I kept the cassette player working all weekend uploading old audio tapes to the computer for digital conversion into MP3 archives — in between playing pirates, dragons, and race cars.

At one point after I inserted a new cassette and pressed the play button, Ryan looked inside the door of the cassette player and asked, "What's spinning, Grandpa?" I replied, "That's the tape in there." Without skipping a beat he probed further, "What's a tape?"

I suddenly felt much older.